Breadcrumb

Amy Lowell: The Trumpet-Vine Arbour

The Trumpet-Vine Arbour

The throats of the little red trumpet-flowers are wide open,And the clangour of brass beats against the hot sunlight.They bray and blare at the burning sky.Red! Red! Coarse notes of red,Trumpeted at the blue sky.In long streaks of sound, molten metal,The vine declares itself.Clang! — from its red and yellow trumpets.Clang! — from its long, nasal trumpets,Splitting the sunlight into ribbons, tattered and shot with noise.

I sit in the cool arbour, in a green-and-gold twilight.It is very still, for I cannot hear the trumpets,I only know that they are red and open,And that the sun above the arbour shakes with heat.My quill is newly mended,And makes fine-drawn lines with its point.Down the long, white paper it makes little lines,Just lines — up — down — criss-cross.My heart is strained out at the pin-point of my quill;It is thin and writhing like the marks of the pen.My hand marches to a squeaky tune,It marches down the paper to a squealing of fifes.My pen and the trumpet-flowers,And Washington's armies away over the smoke-tree to the Southwest."Yankee Doodle," my Darling! It is you against the British,Marching in your ragged shoes to batter down King George.What have you got in your hat? Not a feather, I wager.Just a hay-straw, for it is the harvest you are fighting for.Hay in your hat, and the whites of their eyes for a target!Like Bunker Hill, two years ago, when I watched all day from the house-topThrough Father's spy-glass.The red city, and the blue, bright water,And puffs of smoke which you made.Twenty miles away,Round by Cambridge, or over the Neck,But the smoke was white — white!To-day the trumpet-flowers are red — red —And I cannot see you fighting,But old Mr. Dimond has fled to Canada,And Myra sings "Yankee Doodle" at her milking.The red throats of the trumpets bray and clang in the sunshine,And the smoke-tree puffs dun blossoms into the blue air.